OT: Big storm coming

Not sure that this is particularly topical, but from what the news is saying, the storm rolling through today will be pretty severe. Some are speculating it will be the worst storm of the year for the Michigan and Ohio region. May want to text your families to put the grills in the garage and whatnot. Be prepared to duck and cover, many will likely lose power for a while as well.

They're calling it a Derecho, which has very strong straight line winds.

seem to be coming. But as a show only guy I am very interested in the title A Feast for Crows. That could have so many meanings based on the different ways crows are used and referenced in the story. Season 4 can't come soon enough.

crows. And who or what is the feast. If you are a book reader my anticipation and uncertainty may not make sense because you already know what the reference means. Or maybe it means something obvious and I don't see it. In any case, I can't wait, thats alls Im sayin.

Mostly. Everything in Kingslanding and on the wall will be book 3, but Bran is already done with his content in book 3 and Arya has parts of two chapters left, so they might only take one episode. That basically means that they are going to have to start on the book 4/5 content for those two. Dany has two chapters left as well, which they could stretch out for an entire season or they could take an episode or two to cover it and then move on to the book 5 content.

What every longshot, come from behind, underdog will tell ya is this... The other guy, may in fact, be the favorite. The odds may be stacked against you, fair enough. But what the odds don't know is...this isn't a math test.

just not seeing it. I have looked at a couple of radars and futurecasts and I just don't see how this system is going to materialize that fast to strike the midwest that hard. Rain, sure, and lots of it, but I can't see it coming together fast enough to be a DEATHSTORM(allrightsreserved,trademarkdeathstorminc2010,deathstormisnottobeusedinconjunctionwithanyotherstormdescription.....)

far from it. I am just seeing a pattern now where the weather entities that be use cool catchy names and give dire warnings for common weather scenarios that really do no materialize just to increase web traffic.

And yes, the weather channel that now "names" winter storms and regularly predicts about 1 foot more than anybody gets. Is it your position that a television entertainment entity has no interest in generating ratings? Really? Maybe I guess. And they don't "cry wolf," they just create new and creative ways to make sure they are never wrong. Like saying there is a "15%" elevated risk of such an event." There is no way to be wrong making that prediction. It does not even mean anything.

I'm not mad, it's just a dumb premise. Show me your data on how much less snowfall we get than predictions and I will concede my point. But even that is not apples to apples. Snowfall is not a dangerous phenomenon, but heavy storms are.

As for the naming of storms, a derecho is not a new concept, nor was El Nino when that was highly publicized.

From the NOAA site:

"THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR A SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER EVENT TONIGHT."

Most people may overreact to this kind of stuff, but it beats underreacting in my book.

not even saying you are overreacting. I am just saying that phrases such as "the potential exists" really don't give you much information and these types of phrases have become the bread and butter of entities like the weather channel. I am not saying that they don't report when something is happening, only that they lose nothing by over-reporting things that probably are not going to. Especially when they can just say "hey, we just said there was the potential, not that it was going to happen." The weather channel in particular has found away to remain above reproach despite becomming Weather-TMZ.

The NOAA is the government agency in charge of releasing the official warnings and whatnot, so ratings do not matter to them. The weather channel may be a little dramatized, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't pay heed to their warnings. That being said, cheers. Hopefully it is all hype.

The biggest area of focus is well south of I-94. Timeframe will be later this evening if anyone in Michigan gets the brunt of the storms - mostly Chicago southward to Indianapolis is in the moderate risk.

For the Chicago area they are talking about baseball size hail, flash flooding and even tornados. Hopefully it won't be as bad as what they're saying but they are expecting it to hit here at some point this afternoon and then into the evening. I know I definitely won't be out then.

What will make it bad once I am home is that I have Directv and the Hawks are playing tonight. More than likely I won't be getting any kind of signal if its bad during the game because of the rain and wind.

I have Dish Network, and my signal too goes crappy with storms like this. Not looking forward to the drive home from work in it either, hopefully it comes late tonight through Chicago.

**EDIT: I checked weather.com and lucky me, this is supposed to hit right at rush hour. With luck though it will pass through before the Hawks game starts, but it's supposed to clear up by 9 so at least I should have signal back by the end of the game.

And most bars use satellite as well, so parking myself at a bar probably won't really help. Missing a bunch of a Cup finals game would suck.

Of course, the really big disaster is if there's a massive power outage. I'm sure United Center has backup generators, but I'd assume it wouldn't be enough to run everything necessary for a Stanley Cup game?

What I had to do the last time that there was bad weather and I was trying to watch a game was to stream the game from my iPad through my Apple tv. Directv offers "live tv" on their app so I was able to play the game on the iPad and then stream it through the Apple tv to my tv. Worked great until the weather got better and I could then watch it through the Directv. Also there is an NBC app that I have on my phone which has been showing all of the games so if for some reason the Directv app didn't have the game streaming I could use the NBC app instead. A couple options in case of bad weather is nice.

southern Michigan in the earlier 2000's (can't remember exact year). They move very fast compared to most storms. So, you need to keep an eye on the radar and don't get fooled into thinking "oh I have at least an hour to do something outside or run an errand". It's not worth being caught out in it. That particular storm sheered off about a dozen power line poles near us and caused an outage that lasted several days. Hopefully, this storm will be nothing that bad.

"You owe it to every man, woman, and child in the State of Michigan to beat the Buckeyes and silence their fans! Now go out there and make it happen!"

Oh, goodie. The entire contents of my garage is currently loaded onto 6-foot racks and tarped down in my backyard in preparation for a new garage floor installation. What's worse - the broad side of the racks face, you guessed it, west.

If it is a derecho, brace yourself. We got one here in central Virginia last summer and we had 100+ mile an hour winds for about 10 minutes, then it was gone. The damage was catastrophic, though. Nobody had power for 3 days, and many people in rural areas didn't get it back for a week and a half.

The proud few who worked for Detroit Edison in 1980 and are still here still talk about the infamous "Green Storm" here, which was the derecho event that impacted SE Michigan in July of 1980. NWS Story here. According to this, the green color was from the low reflective angle of the Sun because it was relatively early in the morning when the storm hit.

It did a lot of damage around Ann Arbor and from about Canton in Wayne County southward. Several portions of the Edison service territory were without power for up to 10 days as a result. Gusts within the storm were reported anywhere from 100 to 150 MPH supposedly.

Adjusted for inflation, the four-state rampage of this event totalled over $1 billion in damage stricly from straight-line wind damage, according to one report on derechos.

"Funny isn't it, how naughty dentists always make that one fatal mistake."

The fact that there may be golf ball sized hail means that when this hits, you'll not want to be driving. Busted windshield for sure if you are. As far as the winds, from what I can tell the big risk is falling limbs and trees. I'd guess that farmland would be relatively safe? I would avoid being out in it, though, if it were me.

But Cleveland to Ann Arbor should be far enough north to avoid the worst of it. If you do decide to drive... please please please monitor as you go, because storms will be possible over a very large area today... including along the I-80 corridor.

The worst weather will likely stay south of the Ann Arbor area... but if you live in Eastern Iowa, Northern Illinois (including Chicago), Northern Indiana and NE Ohio, get ready for some nasty straight line winds. The worst tornado/hail threat will likely be across eastern Iowa and NW Illinois, and earlier in the afternoon, since storms will probably turn into a line quickly after they form... something that isn't great for tornadoes.

One of my colleagues used to work in the news industry, and she said around the newsroom they used a term to describe the meterologists and weather reporters when they got excited about extreme weather: a weather woody.